The iPaaS Decision Tree: Should you buy or build your integrations?

Today's IT environment necessitates multiple teams working on multiple platforms including cloud software, legacy systems, databases, et al. These technologies often do not communicate with each other natively. For business data integrity, connectivity between disparate apps and services is critical, which is why an increasing number of organizations are turning to application and data integration.

Considering the breakneck speed at which technology is evolving, designing a fully integrated, data-driven system in the shortest possible time has become a differentiating factor. The faster an organization integrates all their systems, the quicker it can optimize business processes and improve the bottom line.

Yet, the task of creating enterprise-wide integrations continues to puzzle businesses. Most organizations are at the crossroads of “build vs. buy” and are not sure which direction to pursue.

Determining whether to buy or build integrations

For organizations that have minimal integration requirements, hand-coded integrations are often perceived as the quickest and most logical path.

However, the integration requirements are constantly changing because of new applications or adjustments to the business processes. As the number of integrations across applications multiplies, the complexity of the infrastructure increases. Custom integrations prove inadequate for this new scenario and often give rise to 'spaghetti code', consequently contributing to the organization's technical debt.

To better understand this, let's take a look at how the Build vs. Buy decision can impact an organization.

Building your integrations

The build option offers full control, from infrastructure to coding – the integration is designed, run, maintained and monitored in-house, the costs of which are entirely borne by the organization. A developer can combine custom code and open source libraries to create point-to-point integrations between multiple applications. The drawback, however, with building an integration is that it offers limited scope of accessibility to other teams and increases the dependency on the IT department.

Once the initial integration is running, there is a constant maintenance of the integration from scaling and patching to managing API changes across multiple services.

Buying a third-party integration service

Purchasing an integration platform or iPaaS comes with an advantage of speed and agility. An integration platform allows teams to design custom integrations by offering them a variety of pre-built connectors and easy-to-use graphical design tools. The maintenance, security and scalability of the solution is handled by the service provider, saving you countless hours every week.

Ultimately, choosing to build or buy software is subjective and no two companies may follow the same path.

Before you make the decision, consider the following:

Does the integration require additional resources for creation, deployment, and maintenance?

Does it need special permissions and user authentication for access by different teams?

Does the integration come with self-service capabilities or requires extensive technical training?

Will the integration cause changes in the existing infrastructure and processes?

How many use cases will the integration address?

Does the integration exceed the established timeline and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)?

Tying it all together: Why choose an iPaaS?

Having a single platform to integrate numerous applications and services can simplify your deployment and help drive additional value through workflows that automate business processes. An integration platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) empowers teams to bring together applications, services and data from different environments into a single interface. By leveraging an iPaaS, teams can develop customized cloud and hybrid integrations, without having to install any additional software. Since iPaaS is cloud-based, it is easy to implement, manage and scale, making it one of the most cost-effective enterprise integration platforms.

With iPaaS, you can take advantage of the following:

Connect multiple applications from different environments in a few minutes

Automate repetitive tasks

Integrate, store, access, and transform different types of data from the same platform

Break down data silos and improve collaboration between teams and applications

Reduce DevOps requests

Free up IT cycles by enabling teams to manage their integration needs with a no-code, self-service interface

Reduce the total cost of operations for integration projects

Accelerate time to market

Simplify your integration model with Built.io Flow

Built.io Flow is an award-winning, enterprise-grade iPaaS. It integrates data from various applications spanning across public and private clouds, legacy systems, mobile devices, and IoT into a centralized dashboard.

The clean and intuitive UI offered by Built.io Flow comes with visual drag-and-drop tools that make it easy for anyone to build an integration workflow within minutes. Additionally, Built.io Flow offers broad connectivity with hundreds of services so you can design workflows tailored to your specific needs.

For businesses that are attempting to cut down on infrastructure costs, using Flow removes the need to install, maintain, and update the software.